


Pretty Kind Of Dirty

by heather_in_hell



Category: Heathers: The Musical - Murphy & O'Keefe
Genre: Angst, F/M, Some Fluff, Some character exploration, Song Lyrics, song inspired fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-25 19:26:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4973260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heather_in_hell/pseuds/heather_in_hell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An exploration of JD and Veronica's relationship, inspired by The 1975's song 'Robbers'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pretty Kind Of Dirty

**Author's Note:**

> It's come to my attention that The 1975 has been branded as a 'basic white girl band' by the internet. But who cares? They make fantastic music and they're one of my favourite bands at the moment. It also really bothers me that when young girls are interested in something, they get mocked for it, no matter what it is, but that's a rant for another time. I thought the lyrics to their song 'Robbers' fit JD and Veronica's relationship so perfectly, so I wrote this lil thang. I actually read somewhere that the song was inspired by the film 'True Romance', which, coincidentally, is a Christian Slater film. There's some other songs of theirs that remind me of the JD/Veronica relationship as well, such as "Heart Out', 'Me' and even 'Chocolate'. That's a lot of songs, but they tend to write a lot of songs about fucked up or unconventional love stories. Or maybe it's just me reading too much into it. You decide. But hey, if you don't know 'Robbers', I suggest listening to it! I also tried my best to incorporate some of the lyrics throughout the story in the most natural/least cheesy way I could.  
> Also, if anyone is interested in more music recommendations, I made a JD/Veronica playlist. Enjoy.  
> https://8tracks.com/currie-18/say-hi-to-god

JD sees her first. Her eyes are scanning the shelves of the late night 7-Eleven and her clothes look especially blue underneath the harsh fluorescent lighting. She almost looks unreal; copied and pasted from a magazine and into the mundane world that was Sherwood, Ohio. She stands out too much for someone casually strolling down the aisles of a convenience store, but hey, who was JD to judge? He must have looked as equally out of place; his long black jacket often trailing behind him like a modern day vampire cape when he walked too quickly.

 He likes her. He knows that for certain, and it hasn’t even been a full day of knowing her. Technically, he doesn’t know her at all, but just looking at her gives him that feeling. That feeling that he’s talked to her before; somewhere far, far away from Sherwood. So he greets her.

 He can physically feel the attraction like magnets pulling them closer together. He makes a stupid joke about his psychotic father, she lets out a dorky but nonetheless charming laugh. Their eyes meet and you can almost hear the crackle of electricity.

 “Veronicaaaa!” the annoying Red Heather yells from outside, and JD cringes at her squawky voice. Veronica gives him an apologetic look.

 “Bag the party,” he tells her, “hang here.”

 She scoffs playfully at the suggestion, even though JD knows that’s probably what she prefers to do.

 “7-Eleven,” she says flirtatiously, “swanky first date.”

 She ends up leaving anyway, and he raises his cup in her direction, watching as she goes.

* * *

  Her scream wakes him up.

 He’s jolted upward, and suddenly she’s there, having found a way into his arms. God, even when she’s scared, she still looks like she’s too pretty for this world. And not in the delicate way. Veronica was a tough kind of pretty, always dressed in blue and skirts and sheer tights, but still an edginess in her eyes and face and walk. That edge especially showed when she was angry or passionate, like what JD saw when she climbed up into his bedroom the night before. Almost like a pretty-kind-of-dirty look to her. And JD loved it. As for last night… _well_ , JD got to experience first hand just how much edge she had.

 Veronica begins to hastily button up her shirt and explains how she has to get to Heather’s house. JD rolls his eyes when she isn’t looking. He gently tugs her back onto his bed by her waist when she starts to stand up and playfully tackles her. She laughs deeply and shoves at his arm. Perhaps this was a little too domestic for only having had sex once, but JD didn’t care, and Veronica didn’t seem to mind either.

“Stay,” JD half whispers into her ear. “Stay.”

 She gives him a long and thoughtful look before nodding. “Okay,” she says, “just for a little while. But I still have to kiss Heather’s aerobicized ass.”

 Something bitter settles inside JD when Veronica mentions the devil in a red blazer and heels, but it leaves just as quickly as it arrived when Veronica begins to trace patters onto his bare chest, the sunbeams shining through his blinds and onto his body acting as her guidelines.

* * *

 

 Veronica is frightened by how easy it is to fall back into her natural rhythm with JD after they kill Heather.

 You’d think killing someone, seeing a dead body and forging a suicide note would’ve made things a tad awkward between them. But it didn’t, not really.

 Of course, there’s a light nagging in the back of her mind chanting _you killed her, you killed her_ over and over. But oddly enough, when she was with the person who was an accomplice in the whole damn thing…she didn’t feel strange with him.

There was a part of them that still oddly felt like teenagers. He’d take her on long drives, share a slushy, see a flick and make smart ass commentary during the whole thing. Go back to his place to fuck and pray his creepy dad wasn’t around to hear any of it. Sometimes, she’d leave at night to go back to her house just to avoid suspicion from her parents, and sometimes she’d lie and say she was going to Martha’s just so she could stay with him. Though she really should stop using that excuse, because it’s starting to make her feel guilty.

 Guiltier than offing Heather, and that alarms her even more.

 Veronica would’ve never, ever killed someone without JD. But even so, she doesn’t wish Heather was alive again, either. She really doesn’t know what this says about her.

  _It was an accident_ , she tells herself. _This happened only once._

* * *

 

 “Tell me about your other schools,” Veronica says one night. She’s wrapped up in her bed sheets with JD laying next to her, the lull of the autumnal night outside enough to fill the silence.

 He quirks an eyebrow. “What about them?”

 Veronica shrugs and shifts so she’s properly facing him. A curious smile tugs at her lips. “I don’t know. What were they like? Did you have a favourite one? Favourite place to live?”

 JD pretends to think about it, but really, he’s indifferent to all of them. Travelling didn’t excite him, especially since he’d been doing it his whole life with his dad. School doesn’t interest him despite his decent grades, and moving around a lot meant making zero friends. Not like he could make any without moving.

 “I don’t know what to tell you,” JD says. “My old man’s been in nearly every television in America talking about exploding deteriorating buildings, so not many people want to approach you after hearing that.”

 Veronica nods like she understands. JD’s not so sure she does, but the attempt to relate is nice enough. He hasn’t had someone to relate to in a long time.

"Here’s fine, though,” he says, looking right at her like she holds the secrets to the world. “Here’s just fine.”

 She smiles and presses her lips to his. As much as she hates her limiting, wearisome town, ‘here’ really can be fine sometimes.

* * *

 

 JD’s known about weapons for as long as he can remember.

 Growing up with a dad who blows shit up as a profession exposes you to that stuff. He remembers a time when his mom was still alive, her in the kitchen making coffee and him in the living room watching Saturday morning cartoons, though not really paying attention. He’d look through the sliding glass door that lead to the backyard to see his father cursing at himself underneath his breath and firing away at an old withering tree. They often received noise complaints, surprise surprise.

 JD knows weapons. He knows guns and self-defence and when exactly to pick fight or flight. He didn’t learn all of that from his dad. There’s always been weapons; always been war. It comes as easily to him as breathing.

* * *

 

 “ _It was only supposed to happen once_ ” is the mantra that repeats over and over in Veronica’s head. _Only one time._ _Only once only once only once it was an accident only once did I want this? Do I feel bad? Only once._

She’s sitting in the passenger seat of JD’s car. They’re driving away from the cemetery; away from Kurt and Ram’s dead bodies that aren’t in caskets yet. She pictures their motionless hands holding onto a forged suicide note that contains words like “un-understanding” and “misapproving”, words she knows they use. Or used to use.

  _It was only supposed to happen once_. But it didn't just happen once. This time, not entirely an accident.

 JD says nothing as they drive. Silence between them is usually comfortable, but not this time. Veronica doesn’t know whether to scream at JD to fucking _say_ something or to let the silence consume her. She chooses the latter for now and waits; the words trying to assemble a question in her mind, but not coming out.

 “Everything’s gone wrong,” she mouths to herself, the volume too low for JD to hear despite the lack of sound in the car. She wonders if anything was right to begin with.

* * *

 

 “Why do you always wear that jacket?” Veronica asks one day while hanging out in JD’s bedroom. She wants to say that they’re ‘dating’ at this point, although it’s only been a few days since they’d met and she’s never been one for labels. An ironic thing to think as the newest Heather.

  _The couple that murders Heather Chandler together stays together_ , she thinks sourly.

 JD’s just in the middle of taking it off when she asks the question. He shrugs it back on and gives her a smirk. “Why? Is it too revealing for your tastes?”

 She huffs out a laugh. “Sure. You know how long, black fabric that covers the body from head-to-toe turns me on.”

 He laughs this time, then gives an exaggerated wink. “Don’t I look cool?”

 She plops herself down on the edge of his bed, bouncing a bit as she gets settled. “Oh babe,” she says in a playfully mocking tone, “you look _so_ cool.”

* * *

 

 

 She did think he was cool. In her defence, how could she not be charmed by a tall, dark and handsome guy who was just as intellectual she she was in a sea full of idiots? Guilty as charged. Perhaps handsome serial killers with fucked up pasts were her type.

 She tries not to think of the boiler room or the football field. It appears in her nightmares occasionally; smoky visions of a boy dressed in black and soot giving his last fight before blowing up. She tries to block out JD’s voice telling her how much she wanted it just as much as he did. She tries not to hear his voice say ‘I love you’. She tries not to think of these things in fear that he may be right.

 He’s gone. She knows it’s for the best. That’s what she’s telling herself, at least.

 She feels a lump in her throat every time she passes a 7-Eleven or the house where he and his dad used to live. She even feels that way going to school sometimes, and not in the typical ‘I-dread-high-school’ kind of way that she’d always felt before JD.

 It’s strange to miss someone who caused such a destruction. She knows she shouldn’t. But he was real; very, very real, and he was apart of her life. She can’t erase any of it, even the good.

She hears what people say about her in the halls at school; that she dated a psycho who couldn’t be saved. Funnily enough, she often thinks that description suits her just as much as it did for JD.

"Stick around here," he'd told her while prying a ticking bomb out of her arms. "Make things better." She doesn't quite know how to do this yet. JD taught her a lot of things about herself, but not much about spreading good into the world. The asshole had to blow up before he could impart any words of wisdom on that topic. 

On graduation day, Veronica tries not to puke when a small tribute to the lost lives of the year is made. She imagines what JD would have said if he were still alive. Probably'd make a snarky comment under his breath and roll his eyes at the fake tears. 

She's moving into residence at her new college soon. A part of her wants JD to stay far, far away from her in her new life. A dark, small corner in her wishes he'd follow. But she'd never admit that, not even to herself. There's a lot she'd never admit to herself.


End file.
